Empathie et groupe d'appartenance chez les futurs étudiants en médecine : l'Homme est-il un loup pour l'Homme ?

Background: Previous studies revealed a significant empathy decline over time among medical students. Scientific literature also supports the influence of group belonging on the empathy expression.
Objective: Through this study, we aimed to demonstrate whether group belonging (peers or patients) significantly influences empathy levels before students undertake their education in medicine.
Design: A total of 194 incoming medical students participated in our study. All participants filled-in the Interpersonal Reactivity Index under three primed situations (a general; a peers’ one; a patients’ one) at three different points in time during a session of information. Results: Analyses revealed significant main effects of: gender; situations; and empathy dimensions. We also obtained a significant interaction effect between dimensions and situations.
Conclusions: We showed that empathy levels were modulated by group belonging (25% of the variance was explained by group belonging). Post hoc analyses showed that the differ- ences between the peers’ and patients’ situations tend to reveal an appropriate professional attitude with regard to patients because they displayed: (1) lower scores on personal distress and fantasy; (2) higher scores on perspective taking (as for peers); (3) stable scores on empathic concern in peers’ and patients’ situations. However, integrating empathy lessons in the educational program of medical students remains a priority. In a long-term perspective, these findings suggest an investigation of the impacts of group belonging on the evolution of students’ empathy scores through their medicine studies.